The Fluke Distraction

The left hasn't won its war against religious liberty.

By

James Taranto

March 5, 2012

There seems to be wide agreement that the Sandra Fluke kerfuffle handed the left a major political victory. We respectfully dissent.

"Conservatives and those who care about religious liberty should be dismayed by the way the left has been allowed to shield an ominous attempt to expand government power and subvert religious freedom behind a faux defense of women's rights," writes Commentary's Jonathan Tobin, reflecting the despair on the right. A Christian Science Monitor subheadline sums up the triumphalist mood on the left: "Before Rush Limbaugh spoke up, the Republicans thought they had a winning issue on contraception in health-care plans. Now, everyone is on the same side: against Rush Limbaugh."

The kerfuffle was no fluke but a left-liberal set piece. It started 2½ weeks ago, when the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee held hearings on the ObamaCare contraception mandate and its implications for religious liberty. The Washington Examiner's Byron York reports that Democrats originally chose Barry Lynn of Americans United for Separation of Church and State over Fluke to testify for the anti-religious-liberty side.

ENLARGE

Fluke testifies at the mock hearing.
Associated Press

Then they sandbagged the Republicans. They asked, too late, for Fluke to be subbed in for Lynn, then told Lynn not to bother showing up. When the hearing took place, Rep. Carolyn Maloney (this columnist's congressman, but don't blame us) demanded: "Where are the women?" Although it was the Dems who chose Lynn over Fluke and the second panel of witnesses included two female members, liberal media dutifully propagated the "Republican sexism" charge. A week later, House Democrats held a mock hearing where Fluke testified.

Like Cindy Sheehan, Fluke was a left-wing activist cast in the role of everywoman (or as much of an "everywoman" as a student at an elite law school can be). "Fluke has a long history of feminist advocacy," reports the Daily Caller: "While [an undergraduate] at Cornell, Fluke's organized activities centered on the far-left feminist and gender equity movements. Fluke participated in rallies supporting abortion, protests against war in Iraq and efforts to recruit other womens' [sic] rights activists to campus." She even got a bachelor's degree in something called "Feminist, Gender, & Sexuality Studies."

"Without insurance coverage, contraception, as you know, can cost a woman over $3,000 during law school," Fluke said in her testimony. But last Tuesday The Weekly Standard's John McCormack debunked the claim:

Fluke's testimony was very misleading. Birth control pills can be purchased for as low as $9 per month at a pharmacy near Georgetown's campus. According to an employee at the pharmacy in Washington, D.C.'s Target store, the pharmacy sells birth control pills--the generic versions of Ortho Tri-Cyclen and Ortho-Cyclen--for $9 per month. "That's the price without insurance," the Target employee said.

Nine dollars a month amounts to $324 over three years of law school.

Thus this dishonest distraction was already well under way by Wednesday, when Rush Limbaugh famously joked: "What does it say about . . . Fluke, who goes before a congressional committee and essentially says that she must be paid to have sex, what does that make her? It makes her a slut, right? It makes her a prostitute. She wants to be paid to have sex. She's having so much sex she can't afford the contraception."

On Saturday, Limbaugh acknowledged his mistake: "My choice of words was not the best, and in the attempt to be humorous, I created a national stir. I sincerely apologize to Ms. Fluke for the insulting word choices." No doubt it's satisfying to the left to have brought Limbaugh to heel, something that isn't easy to do. And it's true that Limbaugh's ill-chosen words magnified the Fluke distraction.

But whereas distractions are evanescent, the religious-liberty issue hasn't gone away. In fact, on Thursday the Democrat-controlled Senate passed up an opportunity to blunt the issue, rejecting by a 51-48 procedural vote, with only four senators crossing party lines, an amendment that would have allowed conscience exemptions to the ObamaCare contraception mandate. At least four vulnerable Democratic senators seeking re-election--Bill Nelson of Florida, Claire McCaskill of Missouri, Jon Tester of Montana and Sherrod Brown of Ohio--are now on record against religious liberty.

The triumphalist liberal view is that this is a losing issue for Republicans anyway, because Americans love contraception. In a Forbes.com column, Democratic pollster Doug Schoen asserts that "the issue of access to contraception will only further help the Democrats with moderate and independent women in swing states":

Most Americans do not see the issue of whether or not women should be able to get free access to contraceptive care not [sic] in the context of protecting the constitutional right to religious freedom, but rather as an assault on women's rights by a Republican Party that is seeking to deny women fundamental access to health care.

Indeed, poll after poll shows that virtually every American woman uses contraception, and close to 60% of Catholic women support having affiliated institutions like Catholic hospitals, provide contraception.

We're pretty sure that third "not" in the first sentence is a mistake, because the sentence makes sense only without it. Asked for data to back his assertions, Schoen referred us to results of a poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation, which suggest, unsurprisingly, that Americans generally approve of contraception.

Podcast

But none of the numbers Schoen cited spoke directly to the religious-liberty question. It turns out the results there are ambiguous: Asked whether they see the ObamaCare mandate as "more an issue of religious freedom" or "more an issue of women's rights," the Kaiser survey participants broke almost exactly evenly: 23% religious freedom, 24% women's rights, 26% both. Similar results obtained for Catholics (25%, 26%, 27%) and independents (22%, 23%, 28%). Those all-important independent women broke down 22%, 23% and 32%, which means they are actually slightly more likely than voters overall to view it as at least partly a matter of religious freedom.

The Wall Street Journal reports on another new survey--taken between Feb. 29 and March 3, and thus coinciding with the Fluke distraction--with similarly ambiguous findings:

The poll gave a mixed picture of [President] Obama's efforts to require most employers to cover contraception in their health-care plans. It found wide support for the U.S. government requiring employers to offer free birth control coverage, with 53% supporting the policy and 33% opposed. But support dropped sharply, to 38%, when people were asked about the requirement applying to religiously affiliated hospitals and colleges, and having the insurer pay for the cost.

Another telling result is not mentioned in the Journal news story. Each of the questions was asked two ways: with and without mention that the mandate includes "the morning after pill" (the pollsters did not use the word "abortifacient"). The 53% to 33% figure is for the version of the question without the morning-after pill; with it, support drops to 43%, with 43% opposed. Likewise, when the morning-after pill was mentioned in the question about applying the mandate to Catholic and other religious institutions, support for the mandate dropped further, to 34% from 38%.

In other words, the less you know about the ObamaCare mandate, the more likely you are to support it. Being informed of two salient facts--that it includes the morning-after pill and that it is imposed on religious institutions--is enough to sway just under 1 in 5 voters from support to opposition.

Catholics who attend church every week made up 12% of the electorate in 2008, according to exit polls. Those are the voters who are likely to be the best informed on this issue, and probably for whom it is most likely to change their vote. Peggy Noonan noted last month that in 2008 Barack Obama won the votes of 49% of churchgoing Catholics. Obama thus risks alienating a segment of the electorate he can neither take for granted nor afford to write off. You can see why the left would find it more pleasant to talk about Sandra Fluke's hurt feelings.

Crony Conservatism Saul Alinsky wrote two books and became famous for one of them, but he was first and foremost an activist and rabble-rouser. Michael Harrington was a minor political figure, head of the fringe Democratic Socialists of America, but his main contribution was intellectual. His 1962 book, "The Other America: Poverty in the United States," helped inspire the War on Poverty.

Alinsky died in 1972, Harrington in 1989. Had their deaths come on successive days, it would have been a loss to the left analogous to what the right experienced last week, when Andrew Breitbart died on Thursday and James Q. Wilson on Friday. Ross Douthat, the New York Times's surprisingly good columnist, has a nice remembrance of the two very different recently deceased conservatives, "The Scholar and the Rascal." (We're pretty sure we were the first to use the "rascal" appellation for Breitbart.)

Meanwhile, David Frum, who dyslogized Breitbart Thursday, on Friday seized on the scholar's death to take a passive-aggressive shot at the rascal: "An actual giant of conservative thought, James Q. Wilson, has died today," he tweeted. "Appreciation TK at DailyBeast site." On Saturday Frum published his Wilson obit, and it was workmanlike and respectful--except for another shot:

Wilson developed a policy conservatism that was empirical; relevant; useful; and convincing even to those not predisposed to be convinced. It is a conservatism that often seems crowded to the margins by shouters and hucksters.

"Shouters and hucksters" is an obvious reference to Breitbart (and perhaps to Rush Limbaugh, who was in the news by the end of last week). Why even mention Breitbart indirectly in an appreciation for Wilson? As Douthat notes, "Wilson and Breitbart were completely different animals."

To switch metaphors, Breitbart not only wasn't in the same league as Wilson, he wasn't even playing the same sport--even if, broadly speaking, they had a political affinity. To some conservatives, Frum's attitude is as mystifying as that of a Yankees fan who runs around gratuitously insulting New Yorkers who are also Jets fans.

What really drives conservatives crazy about Frum, though, is that his very existence reflects a double standard at the right's expense. Can you imagine a liberal using an obit for someone like Harrington as an opportunity to take a shot at someone like Alinsky? Left-wing intellectuals have no objection to "shouters and hucksters" on their side--or even to people who have committed wicked acts (Bill Ayers) or propagated evil ideas (Jeremiah Wright).

Whereas Frum would like to reinvent conservatism as a club with restrictive admissions standards, liberalism is a public park, open to all. If the Republican Party remade itself in Frum's image, it would likely make improvements in its vote totals among what Charles Murray calls the narrow elite, most of whose members live in or near Manhattan and the District of Columbia. But the narrow elite is overwhelmingly liberal, so such improvements would be only marginal. And the vast majority of voters would have little reason to vote for a Frumian GOP.

Frum's approach to politics makes no political sense--but it makes perfect sense when you consider his position within the narrow elite. He has made a career for himself as a "reasonable" conservative, meaning one who gains status within the narrow elite by reinforcing its prejudices against the sort of people who listen to Limbaugh or admired Breitbart.

For all we know, Frum finds liberal "shouters and hucksters" distasteful too. But if so, nobody cares, because so does every other conservative. Some conservatives wonder why Frum doesn't just "join the other side." Part of the answer probably is that he would not be fully at home on the left ideologically, but part of it also is that his status comes from his identification as conservative. Liberals who loathe Limbaugh and Breitbart are a dime a dozen. Just ask Michael Lind and Charles Johnson, whoever they are.

The narrow elite's, and particularly the media's, hatred for men like Breitbart and Limbaugh is personal as well as ideological. As we argued last year, these outside voices are threats to their authority. Inasmuch as Frum's status depends on that authority, outsiders are a threat to him as well. That's why he takes it so personally. So next time Frum lashes out like this, don't let it get to you. Remind yourself that it's getting to him.

'A Deep Sense of Purpose' Twenty-three-year-old Alex Weinschenker had a troubled adolescence. He dropped out of the University of California, Santa Cruz, after less than a year. "You're always taking the hard road," his father told him, according to the Los Angeles Times. He replied: "No, I'm taking the road less traveled."

Alex got involved with drugs and he fathered a child out of wedlock. But in recent months he finally seemed to be finding a direction:

Last fall . . . he seemed to find his center in a sea of tents surrounding Los Angeles City Hall. He spent his days there silk-screening slogans onto bandannas and T-shirts. . . .

"It was the turning point of his life," said his father, an advertising creative director. "I was very, very proud of him," said his mother, Carol, an interior designer.

Alex arrived at Occupy L.A. before the first tent when up [sic]. He was one of those arrested on the night police took the last tents down.

In between, he worked at the People's Print Lab, where he printed 99% onto hundreds of bandannas, just like the one worn by Sarah Mason, whose image Time magazine used for its Person of the Year, "The Protester."

He was very interested in graphic art and created many of his own designs. He also became a trusted Occupy leader, albeit in a leaderless society.

The headline of the story describes him as having "Found a Deep Sense of Purpose in Occupy L.A.," and the Times piece concludes by observing that "Occupy L.A. had filled Alex Weinschenker with energy and optimism."

The only problem with this story is the ending: "Alex died suddenly last week, probably from a relapse of a drug problem he'd tried to put behind him." It sounds as though Occupy was less a turning point than a progression on a downward spiral.

GINGRICH: "The duty of the president is to find a way to manage the federal government so the primary pain is on changing the bureaucracy. On theft alone, we could save $100 billion a year in Medicaid and Medicare if the federal government were competent. That's a trillion dollars over 10 years. And the only people in pain would be crooks."

THE FACTS: A sober look at the books shows leaders from both parties that painful choices must be made in entitlements. Medicare and Medicaid are running into trouble mainly because of an aging population, the cost of high-tech medicine and budget woes. The number-crunchers say solving health care fraud alone is not enough. Health care fraud investigations are already a big source of recovered money, surpassing fines and penalties collected for defense contracting fraud.

So is Gingrich's factual claim--that competent enforcement of Medicare and Medicaid rules could save $100 billion a year--true or false? Woodward doesn't say! He merely editorializes vaguely that "painful choices must be made." He also points out that one of the causes of Medicare and Medicaid's "trouble" is "budget woes." There's some deep analysis for you.

Out on a Limb

"Rush Limbaugh Is No Stranger to Controversial Statements"--slide show title, Washington Post website, March 5

Who Ordered the Chinese Take-Out? "The Execution Factor: It Was Designed as Propaganda to Deter Would-Be Criminals. Instead Interviews on Death Row Have Become China's New TV Hit"--headline, Daily Mail (London), March 5

CIA, Take Note "One Third of Young Women Would Trade Intelligence for Bigger Breasts, Survey Says"--headline, Puffington Host, March 2

Good News for Coffee-Drinking Owls "Caffeine consumption can disrupt sleep for morning people but has little or no effect on those who are literally 'night owls,' researchers suggest."--Asian News International (India), March 4

It's Always in the Last Place You Look " 'Rick found himself in his faith, and he found himself in Karen,' said Mr. Schoeneman, who has known Mr. Santorum for more than 20 years. . . . Mr. Santorum was elected to the United States Senate in 1994. He likes to say he found God there. . . . And the Santorums moved to Northern Virginia, where they ultimately found a spiritual home at St. Catherine of Siena."--New York Times, March 4

Porn in the USA Philadelphia magazine has another piece on "The Sorry Lives and Confusing Times of Today's Young Men." Ultimately it misses the point, which we made in our Valentine's Day column, that the decline of men is an inevitable result of the rise of women. Along the way, though, it touches on several of the themes we've been writing about of late.

In particular, we like an observation offered (though not fleshed out, alas) by sociologist Kathleen Bogle: "Bogle mentions the 'unintended consequences of inventions' and posits that extended adolescence may be the accidental offspring of the Pill."

This bit also caught our attention:

Speaking of do-it-yourself, more than one academic cites porn as a reason young men are content to climb back into the family nest. "When I was a boy," says Shaun Harper, a professor at Penn's Graduate School of Education who studies how young men live and learn, "you had to work to find porn. And hide it! It was only available in an underground way." Today, it's as close as any website ending in .xxx. Researchers conducting a recent large study on porn and prostitution had trouble finding non-users to serve as a control group.

But the Los Angeles Times has some good news from Simi Valley, home of the Reagan Library:

Not that adult-film producers are flocking over the hill from the porn-rich San Fernando Valley, but the fear is that they might. Angered by a recent L.A. requirement for on-set condom use, producers have made noises about leaving, and officials next door in Simi Valley are trying to thwart an invasion before it gets started. . . .

Under its proposed law, the city would require producers to hire on-set medical professionals, who would attest to appropriate condom use. At the end of a shoot, the producers would have to send their unedited video to the Police Department, where employees would scrutinize it — for compliance with Simi Valley Municipal Code Title 5, Chapter 32, as amended.

Civilian employees, not officers, would do the heavy lifting, scanning films for possible violations.

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